A. Uniqueness – Bush has enough support in congress to keep troops in Iraq until September
Bob Deans, president of the White House Correspondents Association, 7/19/07, White House correspondent for the Cox Newspapers and president of the White House Correspondents Association http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/07/19/0719iraqsenate.html
Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bid Wednesday to set a May 1 deadline for bringing most U.S. combat troops out of Iraq, using a procedural tactic to derail legislation backed by a slim majority of senators.
While 52 senators — including four Republicans — voted to advance the measure, Democrats remained short of the 60 votes needed to end debate and allow an up-or-down vote on the proposal, an amendment offered to the $650 billion defense authorization bill.
After Wednesday's vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pulled the defense policy bill from consideration, effectively putting off until after Labor Day further Senate action aimed at setting a clock for a withdrawal from Iraq.
"Our colleagues in the Senate are going to have a chance to go home, explain their votes and vote again," said Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "And eventually, I am confident, they'll join us in changing the direction in Iraq."
"The American public deserved an up-or-down vote," said the legislation's co-sponsor, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich. "They didn't get it today because they were thwarted by the Republicans."
Republicans, however, said it was premature to set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq, where more than 3,600 U.S. service members have died and more than 27,000 have been wounded.
Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Senate should withhold judgement on such a timetable until it receives a September report from the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. They are to report on the progress made on the ground since American forces backed by a surge of reinforcements opened a new anti-insurgency campaign in June.
"I just think some of my colleagues are taking an unrealistic approach when it comes to how fast we expect this new democracy to take political steps to solve some of these problems," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "I hope we will do nothing that would lead to the likelihood of a failed state and give al Qaeda a foothold in Iraq."
"For the United States Senate time and time and time again to try to micromanage a war with the clear message that all we want to do is get out is — it's insupportable," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.
Wednesday's vote was a critical victory for President Bush. The president hopes that Petraeus and Crocker will be able to show substantial military gains on the ground by then.
"It's important for members of Congress to get a fuller sense of how the surge is working or, also, where they think it's not working," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters shortly after the vote.
The vote showed that Republicans still overwhelmingly support Bush's war policies and retain enough power in Congress to sustain them, especially when backed by Bush's veto power. The House of Representatives voted 223-201, largely along party lines, in favor of a similar withdrawal plan last week, far too few to override a veto.
BUSH GOOD POLITCS D/A SHELL 2/4
B. Links –
1. Compulsory licensing is hugely unpopular in congress, especially for developing countries, due to industry opposition
Srividhya Ragavan, Associate Professor of Law, University of Oklahoma College of Law, May 2004, The Jekyll and Hyde Story of International Trade: the Supreme Court in Phrma v. Walsh and the Trips Agreement, [IK]
Meanwhile, Canada, a long and trusted ally of the United States, ignored the patents and bought Cipro from a generic drug maker. n204 Influenced by Canada, the United States Department of Health and Human Services ("DHHS") threatened to compulsorily license Bayer's patent unless Cipro was available at what the government considered fair price. n205 Thus DHHS did not compulsorily license the patent, but indirectly controlled the price of Cipro at $ 0.95 a pill. n206 The DHHS's actions are comparable to what third-world countries would do under similar circumstances. n207 Meanwhile, the Public Health Emergency Medicines Act ("Emergency Bill") was introduced to incorporate compulsory licensing provisions in the patent legislation. n208 Significantly, [*812] other similar bills introduced in the past were also not passed due to strong opposition by both industry and practitioners. n209 The Emergency Bill, although not passed because the bio-terrorism attempts ceased, faced limited industrial opposition most likely due to the obvious government interest in securing public needs. n210 This limited industry opposition to the reaction of the United States government staunchly contradicted the industry's move in third-world nations, especially South Africa, where scant regard to public interest was displayed. n211 Part of the blame for the industry's reaction can be apportioned to the American government, which continuously supported the industry and prevented the respective governments from prioritizing national responsibilities.
"You can only be at odds with two-thirds of the people on a limited number of issues," said Jack Quinn, who was White House counsel under President Bill Clinton. "He has his back to the wall. He really has depleted his political capital and he simply can't afford to be at odds with most of us on a number of issues. He is conserving what limited political capital he has to see through this final effort on which he's embarked in Iraq." Bush has backed off other confrontations with the new Democratic Congress as well, even as they square off over Iraq. He gave up efforts to confirm John R. Bolton to be permanent ambassador to the United Nations, offered qualified support for a Democratic move to raise the minimum wage, endorsed a Democratic goal of balancing the budget by 2012 and withdrew the nominations of four would-be judges bitterly opposed by Democrats.
If we leave Iraq any time soon, the battle for Baghdad will probably lead to a conflagration that consumes all of Arab Iraq, and quite possibly Kurdistan, too. Once the Shia become both badly bloodied and victorious, raw nationalist and religious passions will grow. A horrific fight with the Sunni Arabs will inevitably draw in support from the ferociously anti-Shiite Sunni religious establishments in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and on the Shiite side from Iran. It will probably destroy most of central Iraq and whet the appetite of Shiite Arab warlords, who will by then dominate their community, for a conflict with the Kurds. If the Americans stabilize Arab Iraq, which means occupying the Sunni triangle, this won't happen. A strong, aggressive American military presence in Iraq can probably halt the radicalization of the Shiite community. Imagine an Iraq modeled on the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The worst elements in the Iranian regime are heavily concentrated in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence, the two organizations most active inside Iraq. The Lebanese Hezbollah is also present giving tutorials. These forces need increasing strife to prosper. Imagine Iraqi Shiites, battle-hardened in a vicious war with Iraq's Arab Sunnis, spiritually and operationally linking up with a revitalized and aggressive clerical dictatorship in Iran. Imagine the Iraqi Sunni Islamic militants, driven from Iraq, joining up with groups like al Qaeda, living to die killing Americans. Imagine the Hashemite monarchy of Jordan overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Sunni Arab refugees. The Hashemites have been lucky and clever since World War II. They've escaped extinction several times. Does anyone want to take bets that the monarchy can survive the implantation of an army of militant, angry Iraqi Sunni Arabs? For those who believe that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is the epicenter of the Middle East, the mass migration of Iraq's Sunni Arabs into Jordan will bury what small chances remain that the Israelis and Palestinians will find an accommodation. With Jordan in trouble, overflowing with viciously anti-American and anti-Israeli Iraqis, peaceful Palestinian evolution on the West Bank of the Jordan river is about as likely as the discovery of the Holy Grail. The repercussions throughout the Middle East of the Sunni-Shiite clash in Iraq are potentially so large it's difficult to digest. Sunni Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia will certainly view a hard-won and bloody Shiite triumph in Iraq as an enormous Iranian victory. The Egyptians or the Saudis or both will go for their own nukes. What little chance remains for the Americans and the Europeans to corral peacefully the clerical regime's nuclear-weapons aspirations will end with a Shiite-Sunni death struggle in Mesopotamia, which the Shia will inevitably win. The Israelis, who are increasingly likely to strike preemptively the major Iranian nuclear sites before the end of George Bush's presidency, will feel even more threatened, especially when the Iranian regime underscores its struggle against the Zionist enemy as a means of compensating for its support to the bloody Shiite conquest in Iraq. With America in full retreat from Iraq, the clerical regime, which has often viewed terrorism as a tool of statecraft, could well revert to the mentality and tactics that produced the bombing of Khobar Towers in 1996. If the Americans are retreating, hit them. That would not be just a radical Shiite view; it was the learned estimation of Osama bin Laden and his kind before 9/11. It's questionable to argue that the war in Iraq has advanced the radical Sunni holy war against the United States. There should be no question, however, that an American defeat in Mesopotamia would be the greatest psychological triumph ever for anti-American jihadists. Al Qaeda and its militant Iraqi allies could dominate western Iraq for years--it could take awhile for the Shiites to drive them out. How in the world could the United States destroy these devils when it no longer had forces on the ground in Anbar? Air power? Would we helicopter Special Forces from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf into a distant war zone when our intelligence information on this desert region was--as it would surely be--somewhere between poor and nonexistent? Images of Desert One in 1980 come to mind. Neither Jordan nor Kuwait may be eager to lend its airfields for American operations that intend to kill Sunnis who are killing Shiites. What successes we've had in both Iraq and Afghanistan have come from our having boots on the ground. There is simply no way in hell the CIA or military intelligence will have reliable collection programs once the United States significantly draws down. Are we going to reinvade Western Iraq? Senators John Kerry and Barack Obama say they would've been tougher on al Qaeda than the Bush administration. One wonders how they would prove that in Iraq after the Americans leave. Give weaponry to a radicalized Shiite army slaughtering Sunnis on its western march toward the Jordanian border?
BUSH GOOD POLITCS D/A SHELL 4/4
2. Terrorism will cause extinction
Yonah Alexander, Senior Fellow and Director at the International Center for Terrorism Studies, August 25th, 2003
Demolish the Myths, The Jerusalem Post, Page 6, Lexis
Terror is not a tactic. At stake is civilization itself. The writer is professor and director, Inter- University for Terrorism Studies (Israel and the US).
Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically the international community's failure, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications of the terrorist threat to the survival of civilization itself. Even the United States and Israel have for decades tended to regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than as a critical strategic challenge to their national security concerns. It is not surprising, therefore, that on September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned to witness the unprecedented tragedy of 19 al-Qaida terrorists striking a devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military centers. Likewise Israel and its citizens, despite the collapse of the Oslo Accords of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism triggered by the second intifada that began almost three years ago, are still "shocked" by each suicide attack. Why are the US and Israel, as well as scores of other countries affected by the universal nightmare of modern terrorism, continually shocked by terrorist surprises? There are several reasons: A misunderstanding of the manifold factors contributing to the expansion of terrorism, such as the absence of a universal definition of terrorism; The religionization of politics; Double standards of morality, weak punishment of terrorists, and exploitation of the media by terrorist propaganda and psychological warfare. Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact. The internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear that we have entered an Age of Super-Terrorism – biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear, and cyber – with its serious implications for national, regional, and global security concerns. Two myths in particular must be debunked immediately if an effective counterterrorism strategy can be developed; for example, strengthening international cooperation. THE FIRST illusion is that terrorism can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated completely, provided the root causes of conflicts – political, social, and economic – are addressed. The conventional illusion is that terrorism used by "oppressed" people seeking to achieve their goals is justified. Consequently, the argument advanced by so-called freedom fighters – "give me liberty and I will give you death" – is tolerated, if not glorified. This traditional rationalization of "sacred" violence often conceals the fact that the real purpose of terrorist groups is to gain political power through the barrel of the gun, in violation of fundamental human rights of the noncombatant segment of societies. For instance, Palestinian religious movements, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and secular entities, such as Fatah's Tanzim and the Aksa Martyrs Brigade, wish not only to resolve national grievances such as settlements, the right of return, and Jerusalem, but primarily to destroy the Jewish state. Similarly, Osama bin Laden's international network not only opposes the presence of American military in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq; its stated objective is to "unite all Muslims and establish a government that follows the rule of the Caliphs." The second myth is that initiating strong action against the terrorist infrastructure – leaders, recruitment, funding, propaganda, training, weapons, operational command and control – will only increase terrorism. The argument here is that law enforcement efforts and military retaliation will inevitably fuel more brutal revenge acts of violence. Clearly, if this perception continues to prevail, particularly in democratic societies, the danger is that such thinking will paralyze governments into inaction, thereby encouraging further terrorist attacks. Past experience provides useful lessons for a realistic strategy. The prudent application of force has demonstrated that it is an effective tool in deterring terrorism in the short and long terms. For example, Israel's targeted killing of Mohammed Sider, the Hebron commander of the Islamic Jihad, defused a ticking bomb. The assassination of Ismail Abu Shanab, a top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, directly responsible for several suicide bombings including the latest bus attack in Jerusalem, disrupted potential terrorist operations. Similarly, the US military operation in Iraq eliminated Saddam Hussein's regime as a state sponsor of terror. Thus it behooves those countries victimized by terrorism to understand a cardinal message communicated by Sir Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940: "Victory at all costs, victory in spite of terror, victory however long and hard the road may be: For without victory there is no survival."
Bob Deans, president of the White House Correspondents Association, 7/19/07, White House correspondent for the Cox Newspapers and president of the White House Correspondents Association http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/07/19/0719iraqsenate.html
Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bid Wednesday to set a May 1 deadline for bringing most U.S. combat troops out of Iraq, using a procedural tactic to derail legislation backed by a slim majority of senators.
While 52 senators — including four Republicans — voted to advance the measure, Democrats remained short of the 60 votes needed to end debate and allow an up-or-down vote on the proposal, an amendment offered to the $650 billion defense authorization bill.
After Wednesday's vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pulled the defense policy bill from consideration, effectively putting off until after Labor Day further Senate action aimed at setting a clock for a withdrawal from Iraq.
"Our colleagues in the Senate are going to have a chance to go home, explain their votes and vote again," said Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "And eventually, I am confident, they'll join us in changing the direction in Iraq."
"The American public deserved an up-or-down vote," said the legislation's co-sponsor, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich. "They didn't get it today because they were thwarted by the Republicans."
Republicans, however, said it was premature to set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq, where more than 3,600 U.S. service members have died and more than 27,000 have been wounded.
Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Senate should withhold judgement on such a timetable until it receives a September report from the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. They are to report on the progress made on the ground since American forces backed by a surge of reinforcements opened a new anti-insurgency campaign in June.
"I just think some of my colleagues are taking an unrealistic approach when it comes to how fast we expect this new democracy to take political steps to solve some of these problems," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "I hope we will do nothing that would lead to the likelihood of a failed state and give al Qaeda a foothold in Iraq."
"For the United States Senate time and time and time again to try to micromanage a war with the clear message that all we want to do is get out is — it's insupportable," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.
Wednesday's vote was a critical victory for President Bush. The president hopes that Petraeus and Crocker will be able to show substantial military gains on the ground by then.
"It's important for members of Congress to get a fuller sense of how the surge is working or, also, where they think it's not working," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters shortly after the vote.
The vote showed that Republicans still overwhelmingly support Bush's war policies and retain enough power in Congress to sustain them, especially when backed by Bush's veto power. The House of Representatives voted 223-201, largely along party lines, in favor of a similar withdrawal plan last week, far too few to override a veto.
BUSH GOOD POLITCS D/A SHELL 2/4
B. Links –
1. Compulsory licensing is hugely unpopular in congress, especially for developing countries, due to industry opposition
Srividhya Ragavan, Associate Professor of Law, University of Oklahoma College of Law, May 2004, The Jekyll and Hyde Story of International Trade: the Supreme Court in Phrma v. Walsh and the Trips Agreement, [IK]
Meanwhile, Canada, a long and trusted ally of the United States, ignored the patents and bought Cipro from a generic drug maker. n204 Influenced by Canada, the United States Department of Health and Human Services ("DHHS") threatened to compulsorily license Bayer's patent unless Cipro was available at what the government considered fair price. n205 Thus DHHS did not compulsorily license the patent, but indirectly controlled the price of Cipro at $ 0.95 a pill. n206 The DHHS's actions are comparable to what third-world countries would do under similar circumstances. n207 Meanwhile, the Public Health Emergency Medicines Act ("Emergency Bill") was introduced to incorporate compulsory licensing provisions in the patent legislation. n208 Significantly, [*812] other similar bills introduced in the past were also not passed due to strong opposition by both industry and practitioners. n209 The Emergency Bill, although not passed because the bio-terrorism attempts ceased, faced limited industrial opposition most likely due to the obvious government interest in securing public needs. n210 This limited industry opposition to the reaction of the United States government staunchly contradicted the industry's move in third-world nations, especially South Africa, where scant regard to public interest was displayed. n211 Part of the blame for the industry's reaction can be apportioned to the American government, which continuously supported the industry and prevented the respective governments from prioritizing national responsibilities.
2. Bush’s capital is key to staying the course in Iraq
Washington Post, 1/18/07, pg. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/17/AR2007011701985.html
"You can only be at odds with two-thirds of the people on a limited number of issues," said Jack Quinn, who was White House counsel under President Bill Clinton. "He has his back to the wall. He really has depleted his political capital and he simply can't afford to be at odds with most of us on a number of issues. He is conserving what limited political capital he has to see through this final effort on which he's embarked in Iraq." Bush has backed off other confrontations with the new Democratic Congress as well, even as they square off over Iraq. He gave up efforts to confirm John R. Bolton to be permanent ambassador to the United Nations, offered qualified support for a Democratic move to raise the minimum wage, endorsed a Democratic goal of balancing the budget by 2012 and withdrew the nominations of four would-be judges bitterly opposed by Democrats.
BUSH GOOD POLITCS D/A SHELL 3/4
C. Impacts –
1. Pullout ensures terrorism and nuclear proliferation
Reuel Gerecht, resident fellow at AEI, 2007, “The Consequences of Failure in Iraq”, Jan 15, http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25407,filter.all/pub_detail.asp
If we leave Iraq any time soon, the battle for Baghdad will probably lead to a conflagration that consumes all of Arab Iraq, and quite possibly Kurdistan, too. Once the Shia become both badly bloodied and victorious, raw nationalist and religious passions will grow. A horrific fight with the Sunni Arabs will inevitably draw in support from the ferociously anti-Shiite Sunni religious establishments in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and on the Shiite side from Iran. It will probably destroy most of central Iraq and whet the appetite of Shiite Arab warlords, who will by then dominate their community, for a conflict with the Kurds. If the Americans stabilize Arab Iraq, which means occupying the Sunni triangle, this won't happen. A strong, aggressive American military presence in Iraq can probably halt the radicalization of the Shiite community. Imagine an Iraq modeled on the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The worst elements in the Iranian regime are heavily concentrated in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence, the two organizations most active inside Iraq. The Lebanese Hezbollah is also present giving tutorials. These forces need increasing strife to prosper. Imagine Iraqi Shiites, battle-hardened in a vicious war with Iraq's Arab Sunnis, spiritually and operationally linking up with a revitalized and aggressive clerical dictatorship in Iran. Imagine the Iraqi Sunni Islamic militants, driven from Iraq, joining up with groups like al Qaeda, living to die killing Americans. Imagine the Hashemite monarchy of Jordan overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Sunni Arab refugees. The Hashemites have been lucky and clever since World War II. They've escaped extinction several times. Does anyone want to take bets that the monarchy can survive the implantation of an army of militant, angry Iraqi Sunni Arabs? For those who believe that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is the epicenter of the Middle East, the mass migration of Iraq's Sunni Arabs into Jordan will bury what small chances remain that the Israelis and Palestinians will find an accommodation. With Jordan in trouble, overflowing with viciously anti-American and anti-Israeli Iraqis, peaceful Palestinian evolution on the West Bank of the Jordan river is about as likely as the discovery of the Holy Grail. The repercussions throughout the Middle East of the Sunni-Shiite clash in Iraq are potentially so large it's difficult to digest. Sunni Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia will certainly view a hard-won and bloody Shiite triumph in Iraq as an enormous Iranian victory. The Egyptians or the Saudis or both will go for their own nukes. What little chance remains for the Americans and the Europeans to corral peacefully the clerical regime's nuclear-weapons aspirations will end with a Shiite-Sunni death struggle in Mesopotamia, which the Shia will inevitably win. The Israelis, who are increasingly likely to strike preemptively the major Iranian nuclear sites before the end of George Bush's presidency, will feel even more threatened, especially when the Iranian regime underscores its struggle against the Zionist enemy as a means of compensating for its support to the bloody Shiite conquest in Iraq. With America in full retreat from Iraq, the clerical regime, which has often viewed terrorism as a tool of statecraft, could well revert to the mentality and tactics that produced the bombing of Khobar Towers in 1996. If the Americans are retreating, hit them. That would not be just a radical Shiite view; it was the learned estimation of Osama bin Laden and his kind before 9/11. It's questionable to argue that the war in Iraq has advanced the radical Sunni holy war against the United States. There should be no question, however, that an American defeat in Mesopotamia would be the greatest psychological triumph ever for anti-American jihadists. Al Qaeda and its militant Iraqi allies could dominate western Iraq for years--it could take awhile for the Shiites to drive them out. How in the world could the United States destroy these devils when it no longer had forces on the ground in Anbar? Air power? Would we helicopter Special Forces from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf into a distant war zone when our intelligence information on this desert region was--as it would surely be--somewhere between poor and nonexistent? Images of Desert One in 1980 come to mind. Neither Jordan nor Kuwait may be eager to lend its airfields for American operations that intend to kill Sunnis who are killing Shiites. What successes we've had in both Iraq and Afghanistan have come from our having boots on the ground. There is simply no way in hell the CIA or military intelligence will have reliable collection programs once the United States significantly draws down. Are we going to reinvade Western Iraq? Senators John Kerry and Barack Obama say they would've been tougher on al Qaeda than the Bush administration. One wonders how they would prove that in Iraq after the Americans leave. Give weaponry to a radicalized Shiite army slaughtering Sunnis on its western march toward the Jordanian border?
BUSH GOOD POLITCS D/A SHELL 4/4
2. Terrorism will cause extinction
Yonah Alexander, Senior Fellow and Director at the International Center for Terrorism Studies, August 25th, 2003
Demolish the Myths, The Jerusalem Post, Page 6, Lexis
Terror is not a tactic. At stake is civilization itself. The writer is professor and director, Inter- University for Terrorism Studies (Israel and the US).
Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically the international community's failure, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications of the terrorist threat to the survival of civilization itself. Even the United States and Israel have for decades tended to regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than as a critical strategic challenge to their national security concerns. It is not surprising, therefore, that on September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned to witness the unprecedented tragedy of 19 al-Qaida terrorists striking a devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military centers. Likewise Israel and its citizens, despite the collapse of the Oslo Accords of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism triggered by the second intifada that began almost three years ago, are still "shocked" by each suicide attack. Why are the US and Israel, as well as scores of other countries affected by the universal nightmare of modern terrorism, continually shocked by terrorist surprises? There are several reasons: A misunderstanding of the manifold factors contributing to the expansion of terrorism, such as the absence of a universal definition of terrorism; The religionization of politics; Double standards of morality, weak punishment of terrorists, and exploitation of the media by terrorist propaganda and psychological warfare. Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact. The internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear that we have entered an Age of Super-Terrorism – biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear, and cyber – with its serious implications for national, regional, and global security concerns. Two myths in particular must be debunked immediately if an effective counterterrorism strategy can be developed; for example, strengthening international cooperation. THE FIRST illusion is that terrorism can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated completely, provided the root causes of conflicts – political, social, and economic – are addressed. The conventional illusion is that terrorism used by "oppressed" people seeking to achieve their goals is justified. Consequently, the argument advanced by so-called freedom fighters – "give me liberty and I will give you death" – is tolerated, if not glorified. This traditional rationalization of "sacred" violence often conceals the fact that the real purpose of terrorist groups is to gain political power through the barrel of the gun, in violation of fundamental human rights of the noncombatant segment of societies. For instance, Palestinian religious movements, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and secular entities, such as Fatah's Tanzim and the Aksa Martyrs Brigade, wish not only to resolve national grievances such as settlements, the right of return, and Jerusalem, but primarily to destroy the Jewish state. Similarly, Osama bin Laden's international network not only opposes the presence of American military in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq; its stated objective is to "unite all Muslims and establish a government that follows the rule of the Caliphs." The second myth is that initiating strong action against the terrorist infrastructure – leaders, recruitment, funding, propaganda, training, weapons, operational command and control – will only increase terrorism. The argument here is that law enforcement efforts and military retaliation will inevitably fuel more brutal revenge acts of violence. Clearly, if this perception continues to prevail, particularly in democratic societies, the danger is that such thinking will paralyze governments into inaction, thereby encouraging further terrorist attacks. Past experience provides useful lessons for a realistic strategy. The prudent application of force has demonstrated that it is an effective tool in deterring terrorism in the short and long terms. For example, Israel's targeted killing of Mohammed Sider, the Hebron commander of the Islamic Jihad, defused a ticking bomb. The assassination of Ismail Abu Shanab, a top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, directly responsible for several suicide bombings including the latest bus attack in Jerusalem, disrupted potential terrorist operations. Similarly, the US military operation in Iraq eliminated Saddam Hussein's regime as a state sponsor of terror. Thus it behooves those countries victimized by terrorism to understand a cardinal message communicated by Sir Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940: "Victory at all costs, victory in spite of terror, victory however long and hard the road may be: For without victory there is no survival."